Source: Wikimedia Commons

The Climate Gospel

on March 26, 2015

The Episcopal Church, and especially Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori, are currently focusing on global climate change and on condemning those who would question the science behind the doomsday claims. Bishop Jefferts Schori recently gave an interview with the Guardian on the subject of global climate change and gave the keynote address at the Climate Change Crisis forum at Campbell Hall Episcopal School in California. This forum was the kickoff for the Episcopal Church’s “30 Days of Action,” culminating on Earth Day, which will involve “a range of activities developed by the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society… for individuals and congregations to understand the environmental crisis.” One of the Episcopal Church’s “Five Marks of Mission,” which purports both to explain the mission of the church and the mission of Christ, is “to strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth.”

In her interview with the Guardian, Jefferts Schori compared to the climate change movement was “much like the civil rights movement,” and that “It is certainly a moral issue.” She also asserted that there is consensus on global climate change and that “to deny the best of current knowledge is not using the gifts God has given you, in that sense, yes, it could be understood as a moral issue.” Jefferts Schori noted that the evangelical community is also beginning to address the issue of climate change particularly because of its effects on the poor. In her keynote address, Jefferts Schori alluded to “Eucharistic Prayer C” – often mocked as the “Star Wars prayer” – which references “this fragile earth, our island home,” saying that, though Episcopalians have been praying it for over forty years, some people are only now seeing the problem of global climate change. She then went on to recite a litany of actions that cause climate change and the catastrophic effects of those actions.

The forum was moderated by climatologist Fritz Coleman of KNBC 4 television news. The first panel included Dr. Lucy Jones, a seismologist, and Princess Daazhraii Johnson, former executive director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee – an indigenous non-profit group in Alaska that focusses on the protection of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Dr. Jones focused on the increase in the frequency and severity of extreme events like earthquakes, hurricanes, and flooding. While she supported the call to change actions allegedly causing climate change, she also stressed the importance of preparedness. Disturbingly, she returned again and again to the idea of population control. She argued that without suitable population control, humans would overwhelm the earth. She asserted that the education of women was the best source of birth control and that, without it, population would continue to spiral out of control. Dr. Jones also argued that focusing on the problem of global climate change is especially difficult for Americans due to our individualism, our inability to see (or care) that our actions effect those around us.

Princess Daazhraii Johnson focused her remarks on the disparate impact of global climate change on indigenous peoples. She talked about her people’s traditional stories, that people and animals once talked the same language and animals could tell people how they wanted to be treated. She said she believed we would not be in this predicament today if we had maintained that connection to the earth and animals, and argued that we could reignite that connection even in modern, urban contexts. She also voiced her approval for New Zealand’s granting personhood to a river and suggested that as a means to achieve ecological justice.

The second panel included Marc Andrus, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of California, who has “made climate change a focus of his episcopacy,” and Mary D. Nichols, and Episcopalian and Chairman of the California Air Resources Board. They discussed climate change as a moral issue, focusing on human responsibility as the principle cause of global climate change and on global climate change’s disparate impact on the Third World. They also discussed whether divestment from coal and oil companies was an effective means of combatting climate change.

Throughout the forum, it was clear that the speakers did not consider the idea that global climate change is primarily caused by human action to be an idea that could be questioned without moral failing. There were, unfortunately, no concrete calls to action besides the proverbial “use less water” and “drive electric cars” motions. Also disturbing was the seeming inability of the Episcopal Church to connect their message of caring for fragile things to the protection of unborn human life.

  1. Comment by Dusty H on March 26, 2015 at 1:30 pm

    “Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the degrading of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.” -Romans 1:24-25

  2. Comment by Terri Kinney on March 26, 2015 at 2:16 pm

    They don’t believe in a soul or in salvation, yet they fancy they can “save the planet.” So they discarded one dogma for another. And the people continue to exit these churches in droves.

  3. Comment by Trevor Thomas on March 26, 2015 at 3:55 pm

    Several years ago (see here: http://www.trevorgrantthomas.com/2009/08/the-new-religion-of-first-world-elites.html) Ian Plimer, an Australian and an ardent atheist and evolutionist (in other words, normally a darling of the left), called global warming “the new religion of First World urban elites,” adding that “Environmentalism has many of the hallmarks of failed European socialism and Western (failed) Christianity. It has a holy book which few have read (IPCC reports), has prophets (Gore) who cannot be challenged, relies on dogma, ignores contrary evidence, has armies of wide-eyed missionaries…; imposes guilt, has a catastrophist view of the planet, and seeks indulgences.”

    Of course, I could not disagree with him more on Christianity, but leave it to an atheist to recognize a religion when he sees one.

  4. Comment by yolo on March 27, 2015 at 2:21 am

    Most atheists are highly religious. What they despise is traditional Christianity or anything like it. They are extremely dogmatic as well. These issues are pure dogma.

  5. Comment by Carlos on March 26, 2015 at 5:11 pm

    Hmm, so the climate change movement is like the civil rights movement? So what form of segregation are we imposing on the poor planet? Not allowing rhinos and cheetahs to sit at lunch counters? Emus sitting at the back of the bus? A prominent leader of polar bears getting shot in Memphis?

    The left has no conscience at all, no sense of shame. Whatever the cause du jour, in their eyes it’s just like the civil rights movement.

    It’s fun watching this denomination dwindle away to nothing. There will be 50 bishops in their funny hats sitting in an empty cathedral, and they’ll still be coming up with Mission Statements that (amazingly) recall the civil rights movement?

  6. Comment by yolo on March 27, 2015 at 2:16 am

    If the global warming movement is like the civil rights movement, then actual freedom (or free will) is the greatest threat to civil rights. At least that’s how they perceive actual freedom, as opposed to supposed freedom like “sexual equality” or some other social mush.

  7. Comment by yolo on March 27, 2015 at 2:13 am

    Well, of course global warming (that’s what it is) is a moral issue. When opposition to eugenics isn’t, when opposition to non-marriage marriage isn’t, when opposition to 60 million abortions since 1973 isn’t that’s what morality becomes. It isn’t Christian, but it is morality. It is a horrible one, but it is. That “connection to the earth and the animals” is the same one the practitioners of cannibalism and human sacrifice have.

  8. Comment by ed-words on March 27, 2015 at 9:22 am

    If people want to jump on the environmental bandwagon, that’s fine with me. But to make that a Christian priority is just plain wrong. What happened to the Great Commission, straight from Jesus himself? “Go and make disciples.” If you want to get all weepy over the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge – consisting mostly of mosquitoes and caribou – that’s your right, but that just doesn’t fit with the Great Commission.

  9. Comment by mikeg on March 27, 2015 at 10:29 am

    If you click on the article’s link to Five Marks of Mission, the first is “to proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom.” But it’s a dead letter, since the denomination makes no effort to do this.

  10. Comment by fredx2 on March 28, 2015 at 12:00 pm

    I think it is now fair to say that the Episcopal church is simply an arm of the Democratic party. You certainly cannot understand it as a church in any meaningful sense any more. No, it is a political advocacy organization, which adheres to the Democratic Party platform far more than it does the bible.

  11. Comment by CapitalistRoader on March 28, 2015 at 12:25 pm

    She argued that without suitable population control, humans would overwhelm the earth.

    That hoary old chestnut again?:

    Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.
    Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich, 1970

  12. Comment by Rhydon Fisher on March 28, 2015 at 6:56 pm

    I can’t stand Katherine Schori… I just hope my denomination (episcopalian) survives the balance of her tenure as presiding bishop. Among other things, she appears to be a heretic. http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2013/06/bishop-jefferts-schoris-two-sermons-curacao-and-charleston Now she’s pushing “climate justice” instead of salvation or the gospel? It just keeps getting better and better…

    Oh, and I find global warming claims laughable. It’s not clear that the earth is even warming up, much less that carbon dioxide is responsible… or that man-made carbon dioxide is involved. The science underlying global warming research is terrible.

  13. Comment by bwsmith on March 28, 2015 at 7:00 pm

    Can we be better stewards? You betcha! We have not been, nor are we the stewards we could be. I don’t doubt human inattention, sloth, greed, and self-centeredness is at the root many issues — see the floating garbage “islands” so grim to behold. But our ability to change the climate — I am not sure. Esp. since it is we who program the computers to produce the models of devastation. But that too many of us are blind to cost of abortion . . . well, if their message is unborn babies are regrettably disposable, then I can’t trust them on taking care of the planet. 🙁

  14. Comment by RCPreader on March 28, 2015 at 8:51 pm

    “increase in the frequency and severity of extreme events like earthquakes, hurricanes, and flooding”
    — There has been no increase in flooding and a decrease in hurricanes.
    — So now global warming causes earthquakes? How exactly? (I suppose this wouldn’t be impossible in areas of melting ice, but how could it increase earthquakes elsewhere?)
    This whole thing sounds like complete nonsense. But, apparently we just have to learn how to talk to animals again and all will be well.

  15. Comment by MarcoPolo on May 1, 2015 at 8:57 pm

    One only needs to step back further than your perspective to realize that the Earth is undergoing dramatic changes.
    If it’s not happening in YOUR backyard, it doesn’t mean that it’s not happening at all.

  16. Comment by Byrom on March 28, 2015 at 9:07 pm

    In case anyone has forgotten, the selection of April 22 as “Earth Day” was deliberate. It is Lenin’s birthday. I have a scientific background (electrical engineer), but I also have a God-given brain and can think for myself. First, the case for “climate change” is based strictly upon computer models with a built-in agenda, one of which is to knock down the United States of America – “garbage in, garbage out.” The historical record of temperatures only goes back to the 1880s or 1890s. The earth has been around for a lot longer than that. Did man cause the Ice Age? Did man cause the Ice Age to cease? There is much evidence of past climate cycles in the tree rings of very old trees. As a country, the United States has used the natural resources of this earth to benefit much of mankind. Think, people, computer models cannot predict with certainty the weather three days from now with legitimate atmospheric input data! How can a computer model predict conditions 100 years from now, with garbage data for input? Yes, I believe in “climate change.” It has been changing for millions of years, or even thousands of years, depending upon your beliefs about the earth’s age! Do I believe those who are pushing “climate change” pseudo-science today? Of course not! At a previous stage in my life, I would have said, “H—-, no!” However, Jesus Christ has taken care of that in my life. The Bible tells us that God has given Man dominion over the earth. That still gives us an obligation to be good stewards of God’s Creation. But, it does not obligate us to be mindless, spineless idiots!

  17. Comment by cken on March 29, 2015 at 12:06 am

    Calling climate change a moral issue is immoral. Yes we are stewards of the planet but to assume we can play god and control the climate is hubris. There is an hypothesis that reducing greenhouse gases like CO2 we can control the climate. Being good stewards should we agree to spend trillions to prove or disprove an hypothesis. The additional problem being if we conduct the experiment and if the climate does change will we ever know if it was human efforts or Gods efforts which caused the change.

  18. Comment by MarcoPolo on May 1, 2015 at 8:53 pm

    Please cite when God has affected climate?

  19. Comment by cken on May 2, 2015 at 9:35 am

    When the sun stood stil, the great flood. All climate is a function of God because of the laws he put in effect when he created the big bang

  20. Comment by MarcoPolo on May 2, 2015 at 9:56 am

    No offense to you personally, but you do realize that is conjectural, and not at all Scientific?

    And which Sun? The Universe holds millions of them!

  21. Comment by parquee_hundido on May 2, 2015 at 12:50 pm

    Go put some clothes on, you are making people puke, you repulsive codger.

  22. Comment by MarcoPolo on May 3, 2015 at 7:15 am

    What does THAT have to do with the conversation?
    Besides, I’m wearing a shirt anyway!

  23. Comment by Evan Hurst on March 29, 2015 at 6:40 pm

    Some of the left-wing churches have staged “climate revivals.” These are the same churches that would roll on the floor laughing if you suggested a “revival” in the traditional sense, with the preaching of repentance and salvation.

    The Episcopalians bless gay “weddings” and they bless “eco-justice,” but they have lost the power to bless individual lives by bringing people to Christ. In other words, they are no longer a church and should be honest enough to say so.

  24. Comment by MarcoPolo on May 1, 2015 at 8:51 pm

    If protecting the lives of the unborn were their concern, then why were they at a symposium on Climate Change?

    I do agree with Dr. Lucy Jones view on over population.
    How should we expect this planet to sustain more people than we currently have?

    After a recent visit to Chick-Filet, I was stunned at how many little Christians were running around everybody ankles! Not that only Christians eat there, and not that there’s anything wrong with Christians, but I’m beginning to think some religions are concerned that differing religions might reproduce at a higher rate than their own?

    Hey! Life is constantly evolving…get over the territorial aspects, and start caring for what’s best for our planet!

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